Treesearch

Pinon-Juniper (Pinus edulis-Juniperus spp.) woodlands cover approximately 40 million hectares of the western United States (Romme et al. 2009) and provide habitat for a diverse suite of avian species. Several U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Birds of Conservation Concern (BCC) depend on Pinon-Juniper habitats for breeding, including the Gray Vireo (Vireo vicinior). Gray Vireos breed within a limited range only in the hot, arid southwestern USA (Barlow et al. 1999). In New Mexico, they occupy the Pinon-Juniper habitats of foothills, canyons, mesas, and rolling hills. Their populations...

Elk (Cervus elaphus) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) differ in nutritional and structural habitat needs; consequently, management of pinyon-juniper (Pinus spp.-Juniperus spp.) woodlands to provide optimal habitat differs for these herbivores. Diet quality requirements are higher for deer, and are highest for both species during late gestation, lactation, and antler growth. Properly timed treatments, especially prescribed burning, can enhance forage quality and alter forage species composition, providing dietary benefits during these times. Late-winter burns provide a nutrient flush...

Montezuma quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae) are unique among quail with respect to clutch size, diet, covey dynamics, and habitat use. With the exception of a few notable early studies, there is relatively little information on the ecology of Montezuma quail. Previous research has indicated that one of the primary habitats utilized by Montezuma quail is pinyon-juniper woodlands. Throughout many areas of the southwestern United States, pinyon-juniper woodlands are often targeted for thinning projects. Many studies have been conducted on the amount of tree canopy cover needed by other quail...

Pinon-Juniper woodlands, the third largest vegetation type in the United States, encompass 40 million ha of western North America, and occur in 10 western U.S. States (Tausch and Hood 2007, Romme et al. 2009, West 1984, Laylock 1999). Pinon-Juniper thinning and mastication treatments have been used by public lands managers and private landowners throughout the western United States to mitigate fire risk, reduce encroachment, enhance wildlife and livestock forage production, and improve wildlife habitat. The Bureau of Land Management along with private and public partners have treated...

Mastication and hand-thinning treatments are increasingly used by land managers as a means of reducing tree cover for fire hazard mitigation and other habitat objectives in pinon-juniper (P-J) woodlands. (Battaglia et al. 2010; Redmond et al. 2013). However, the effects of these treatments on ecological processes including fire, and on a wide range of species, particularly vulnerable P-J obligate birds, are incompletely understood. To address these knowledge gaps, we measured vegetation and fuels, and conducted bird point counts at 232 sites in 29 pairs of 1 to 11-yearold treatments and...

Small-scale (< 5 ha) tree thinning treatments were implemented at two pinyon-juniper (Pinus edulis-Juniperus monosperma) and two ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) wildland-urban interface woodland sites in central New Mexico. We used paired watershed, Before/After/Control/Impact sampling designs with 3 years of prethinning measurements followed by 5 years of posttreatment measurements. Characteristics of soils, vegetation, and wildlife were measured. Manual thinning treatments reduced small trees, removed firewood, and chipped slash. The treatments reduced wildfire fuel loads, changed the...

Pinon-Juniper vegetation covers 100 million acres across the western United States, in areas of diverse topography, climate, and soils. Consequently, Pinon-Juniper vegetation varies greatly in structure and disturbance processes at both the stand and landscape scales. Until recently, however, this variation was not widely recognized, and Pinon-Juniper vegetation was interpreted and managed in much the same way throughout its range (Jacobs 2008a). Early studies were conducted primarily in the Great Basin and Mexican borderlands, where juniper expansion into grasslands and shrublands was a...

Colorado pinyon pine (Pinus edulis) forms mutualistic associations with root-associated ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi which confer improved fitness under stressful conditions and thus may be critical to the success of this species in response to global climate change. We review studies of the EM fungal associations of P. edulis with an emphasis on the literature focused on drought and associated P. edulis mortality. We also describe the importance of other soil microbes including nonmycorrhizal fungi and bacteria, and present data describing dominant soil microbial taxa associated with P....

Severe droughts in the southwestern USA in 2002- 2003 revealed that pinyon pine and juniper trees are susceptible to widespread mortality caused by severe water deficits and drought-facilitated insect outbreaks (Breshears et al., 2005; Clifford et al., 2008). Despite increased interest in forest susceptibility to drought, the influence of stand structure on the drought resilience of pinyon-juniper woodlands remains uncertain (Meddens et al., 2015). Stand structure is of particular interest because it is readily manipulated by silvicultural practices such as thinning. Page (2008) suggests,...

Wildlife managers are concerned about the impacts of climate change on Pinon-Juniper habitats and on the ecosystem services that they provide (Friggens et al. 2013). Contrary to common perception, this extensive ecosystem type is greatly varied in structure, composition, ecology, and habitat value (Comer et al. 2003; Moir and Carlton 1986; Romme et al. 2009), along with the expected manifestations of climate change vulnerability (Comer et al. 2012; Rehfeldt et al. 2006). This work resulted in a geospatial climate vulnerability surface that included five types of Pinon-Juniper across...